Special Warning for Researchers Writing/Publishing Electronically
MLA style requires electronic addresses to be listed between carets (<, >). This is a dangerous practice for anyone writing or publishing electronically, as carets are also used to set off HTML, XHTML, XML and other markup language tags (e.g., HTML's paragraph tag, <p>). When writing in electronic formats, be sure to properly encode your carets.
Basic Style for Citations of Electronic Sources
Here are some common features you should try and find before citing electronic sources in MLA style. Always include as much information as is available/applicable:
Author and/or editor names
Name of the database, or title of project, book, article
Any version numbers available
Date of version, revision, or posting
Publisher information
Date you accessed the material
Electronic address, printed between carets (<, >).
Web Sources
Web sites (in MLA style, the "W" in Web is capitalized, and "Web site" or "Web sites" are written as two words) and Web pages are arguably the most commonly cited form of electronic resource today. Below are a variety of Web sites and pages you might need to cite.
An Entire Web Site
Basic format: Name of Site. Date of Posting/Revision. Name of institution/organization affiliated with the site (sometimes found in copyright statements). Date you accessed the site <electronic address>.
It is necessary to list your date of access because web postings are often updated, and information available on one date may no longer be available later. Be sure to include the complete address for the site. Here are some examples: The Purdue OWL Family of Sites. 26 Aug. 2005. The Writing Lab and OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. 23 April 2006 <http://owl.english.purdue.edu/>.
Felluga, Dino. Guide to Literary and Critical Theory. 28 Nov. 2003. Purdue University. 10 May 2006 <http://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/>.
Treat entire Weblogs or "blogs" just as you would a Web site. For single-author blogs, include the author name (or screen name or alias, as a last resort); blogs with many authors, or an anonymous author, should be listed by the title of the blog itself: Design Observer. 25 Apr. 2006. 10 May 2006. <http://www.designobserver.com/>.
Ratliff, Clancy. CultureCat: Rhetoric and Feminism. 7 May 2006. 11 May 2006. <[[http://culturecat.net>./|http://culturecat.net>.]]
Long URLs
URLs that won't fit on one line of your Works Cited list should be broken at slashes, when possible.
Some Web sites have unusually long URLs that would be virtually impossible to retype; others use frames, so the URL appears the same for each page. To address this problem, either refer to a site's search URL, or provide the path to the resource from an entry page with an easier URL. Begin the path with the word Path followed by a colon, followed by the name of each link, separated by a semicolon. For example, the Amazon.com URL for customer privacy and security information is <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/
tg/browse/-/551434/104-0801289-6225502>, so we'd need to simplify the citation:
Amazon.com. "Privacy and Security." 22 May 2006 <http://www.amazon.com/>. Path: Help; Privacy & Security.
A Page on a Web Site
For an individual page on a Web site, list the author or alias if known, followed by the information covered above for entire Web sites. Make sure the URL points to the exact page you are referring to, or the entry or home page for a collection of pages you're referring to:
"Caret." Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 28 April 2006. 10 May 2006 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caret>.
"How to Make Vegetarian Chili." eHow.com. 10 May 2006 <http://www.ehow.com/
how_10727_make-vegetarian-chili.html>.
Stolley, Karl. "MLA Formatting and Style Guide." The OWL at Purdue. 10 May 2006. Purdue University Writing Lab. 12 May 2006 <http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/557/01/>.
An Image, Including a Painting, Sculpture, or Photograph
For works housed outside of an online home, include the artist's name, the year the work was created, and the institution (e.g., a gallery or museum) that houses it (if applicable), follwed by the city where it is located. Include the complete information for the site where you found the image, including the date of access. In this first example, the image was found on the Web site belonging to the work's home museum:
Goya, Francisco. The Family of Charles IV. 1800. Museo del Prado, Madrid. 22 May 2006 <http://museoprado.mcu.es/i64a.html>.
In this next example, the owner of the online site for the image is different than the image's home museum:
Klee, Paul. Twittering Machine. 1922. Museum of Modern Art, New York. The Artchive. "Klee: Twittering Machine." 22 May 2006 <http://artchive.com/artchive/K/
klee/twittering_machine.jpg.html>.
For other images, cite as you would any other Web page, but make sure you're crediting the original creator of the image. Here's an example from Webshots.com, an online photo-sharing site ("brandychloe" is a username):
brandychloe. Great Horned Owl Family. 22 May 2006 <http://image46.webshots.com/
47/7/17/41/347171741bgVWdN_fs.jpg>.
The above example links directly to the image; but we could also provide the user's profile URL, and give the path for reaching the image, e.g.
brandychloe. Great Horned Owl Family. 22 May 2006 <http://community.webshots.com/user/brandychloe>. Path: Albums; birds; great horned owl family.
Doing so helps others verify information about the images creator, where as linking directly to an image file, like a JPEG (.jpg) may make verification difficult or impossible.
MLA style requires electronic addresses to be listed between carets (<, >). This is a dangerous practice for anyone writing or publishing electronically, as carets are also used to set off HTML, XHTML, XML and other markup language tags (e.g., HTML's paragraph tag, <p>). When writing in electronic formats, be sure to properly encode your carets.
Basic Style for Citations of Electronic Sources
Here are some common features you should try and find before citing electronic sources in MLA style. Always include as much information as is available/applicable:Web Sources
Web sites (in MLA style, the "W" in Web is capitalized, and "Web site" or "Web sites" are written as two words) and Web pages are arguably the most commonly cited form of electronic resource today. Below are a variety of Web sites and pages you might need to cite.An Entire Web Site
Basic format:
Name of Site. Date of Posting/Revision. Name of institution/organization affiliated with the site (sometimes found in copyright statements). Date you accessed the site <electronic address>.
It is necessary to list your date of access because web postings are often updated, and information available on one date may no longer be available later. Be sure to include the complete address for the site. Here are some examples:
The Purdue OWL Family of Sites. 26 Aug. 2005. The Writing Lab and OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. 23 April 2006 <http://owl.english.purdue.edu/>.
Felluga, Dino. Guide to Literary and Critical Theory. 28 Nov. 2003. Purdue University. 10 May 2006 <http://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/>.
Treat entire Weblogs or "blogs" just as you would a Web site. For single-author blogs, include the author name (or screen name or alias, as a last resort); blogs with many authors, or an anonymous author, should be listed by the title of the blog itself:
Design Observer. 25 Apr. 2006. 10 May 2006. <http://www.designobserver.com/>.
Ratliff, Clancy. CultureCat: Rhetoric and Feminism. 7 May 2006. 11 May 2006. <[[http://culturecat.net>./|http://culturecat.net>.]]
Long URLs
URLs that won't fit on one line of your Works Cited list should be broken at slashes, when possible.
Some Web sites have unusually long URLs that would be virtually impossible to retype; others use frames, so the URL appears the same for each page. To address this problem, either refer to a site's search URL, or provide the path to the resource from an entry page with an easier URL. Begin the path with the word Path followed by a colon, followed by the name of each link, separated by a semicolon. For example, the Amazon.com URL for customer privacy and security information is <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/
tg/browse/-/551434/104-0801289-6225502>, so we'd need to simplify the citation:
Amazon.com. "Privacy and Security." 22 May 2006 <http://www.amazon.com/>. Path: Help; Privacy & Security.
A Page on a Web Site
For an individual page on a Web site, list the author or alias if known, followed by the information covered above for entire Web sites. Make sure the URL points to the exact page you are referring to, or the entry or home page for a collection of pages you're referring to:
"Caret." Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 28 April 2006. 10 May 2006 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caret>.
"How to Make Vegetarian Chili." eHow.com. 10 May 2006 <http://www.ehow.com/
how_10727_make-vegetarian-chili.html>.
Stolley, Karl. "MLA Formatting and Style Guide." The OWL at Purdue. 10 May 2006. Purdue University Writing Lab. 12 May 2006 <http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/557/01/>.
An Image, Including a Painting, Sculpture, or Photograph
For works housed outside of an online home, include the artist's name, the year the work was created, and the institution (e.g., a gallery or museum) that houses it (if applicable), follwed by the city where it is located. Include the complete information for the site where you found the image, including the date of access. In this first example, the image was found on the Web site belonging to the work's home museum:
Goya, Francisco. The Family of Charles IV. 1800. Museo del Prado, Madrid. 22 May 2006 <http://museoprado.mcu.es/i64a.html>.
In this next example, the owner of the online site for the image is different than the image's home museum:
Klee, Paul. Twittering Machine. 1922. Museum of Modern Art, New York. The Artchive. "Klee: Twittering Machine." 22 May 2006 <http://artchive.com/artchive/K/
klee/twittering_machine.jpg.html>.
For other images, cite as you would any other Web page, but make sure you're crediting the original creator of the image. Here's an example from Webshots.com, an online photo-sharing site ("brandychloe" is a username):
brandychloe. Great Horned Owl Family. 22 May 2006 <http://image46.webshots.com/
47/7/17/41/347171741bgVWdN_fs.jpg>.
The above example links directly to the image; but we could also provide the user's profile URL, and give the path for reaching the image, e.g.
brandychloe. Great Horned Owl Family. 22 May 2006 <http://community.webshots.com/user/brandychloe>. Path: Albums; birds; great horned owl family.
Doing so helps others verify information about the images creator, where as linking directly to an image file, like a JPEG (.jpg) may make verification difficult or impossible.